Latest revision as of 17:49, 25 September 2012

Scrutinizer

Plixer International, Inc., a leading provider of NetFlow-based network traffic reporting, has released support for Cisco Performance Routing metrics which are exported with Flexible NetFlow. Performance Routing (PfR) was developed to assist in optimizing time sensitive traffic through the network.

"We are excited to be one of the first network traffic monitoring companies to support PfR. Its unique exports required our Flexible NetFlow collector to take a new approach to reporting on the data in the templates." said Michael Patterson - Product Manager and Co-Founder. "Customers looking to gain insight on the collective performance of WAN links are going to appreciate the new metrics related to MOS, Latency, Jitter and Packet Loss."

PfR is one subset in a set of utilities included in the Cisco Application Control and Visibility (AVC) architecture which includes:

The Flexible NetFlow (FnF) export of Network-Based Application Recognition(NBAR) which accurately identifies applications which could be using the same port (e.g TCP port 80). NBAR can determine what applications (e.g. Skype, Webex, VoIP, BitTorrent) are running on your network and how much bandwidth they are consuming.

Prioritization of traffic into the best traffic class for preferential treatment as it passes through each switch and router along the path. For example, VoIP can be given a higher priority over Skype.

The configuration of PfR to ensure that highest priority traffic (e.g. VoIP and Video) uses the best path or route to the destination and that lower priority traffic such as searching on Google is rerouted when necessary to free up bandwidth.

For employees, PfR helps ensure a better application experience – video streaming quality up, ability to work more efficiently in a virtual desktop session, and no more VoIP crackling during conference calls. For network administrators, PfR saves bandwidth by not letting the network get swallowed up by non-work applications such as P2P, Skype or web site browsing. This improved end user experience results in less support calls.

“With the explosion of handheld network devices and social networking, the network traffic is constantly increasing. Enterprises are demanding high availability and a performance guarantee for their business-critical applications. Plixer’s Flexible Netflow-based reporting on the PfR performance measurements allows our customers insight into the performance of their business critical applications, link loads, and brownouts in the network," said Pritam Shah - Manager Software Development: Medianet Video Monitoring & PfR "

Scrutinizer is a one hundred percent web-based tool that provides detailed network utilization reports showing the applications and users generating network traffic. Leveraging the software's domain utilization report, even sites with secured connections that use encrypted traffic can't hide from the insight provided by NetFlow and IPFIX collection and reporting. Scrutinizer is designed to peer deep into bandwidth traffic and enable the network administrator to easily see who is consuming bandwidth, what they are using it for and -- immediately restore precious bandwidth for work-related needs.